Banner hung at Fenway Park: ‘Racism is as American as baseball'

Racism has once again become a topic of discussion at Fenway Park.

Fans at Wednesday’s Red Sox-Athletics game in Boston decided to unfurl a controversial banner that read “Racism is as American as baseball,” prompting the umpires to ask security to remove the fans and their banner, according to multiple reports.

It wasn’t clear exactly what message the fans were attempting to share at first, but one of them clarified later to the Boston Globe that it was anti-racism.

“The banner came in response to the racist comments at the beginning of the season at Fenway,” one of the banner holders, who remains unnamed, said, citing the story Orioles star Adam Jones shared in May about getting peanuts thrown at him and being called the N-word on multiple occasions. “Overall, we saw, we see Boston continually priding itself as a kind of liberal, not racist city, and are reminded also constantly that it’s actually an extremely segregated city.

“Very unfortunate. I heard there was 59 or 60 ejections tonight in the ballpark. It is what it is, right,” Jones said at the time. “I just go out and play baseball. It’s unfortunate that people need to resort to those type of epithets to degrade another human being. I’m trying to make a living for myself and for my family.”

Other major leaguers, including CC Sabathia, Curtis Granderson and Matt Kemp, all echoed that they’ve endured similar experiences, especially in Boston.